Connecticut western news., 1887-02-02
CHINESE FARMING.

CHINESE FARMlNG. Agricultural Doings Among
 the Pig-Tailed Celestials.
 Neat and Productive Farms, Good Garden ing and Myriads of Trees
 In passing through the silk growing district which begins very near to Shanghai and extends all around to the city of Hangchow, writes correspondent of the London Post I could but be struck indeed with the comfort which prevailed everywhere. The farm houses of China, For at any rate in that part of China, were models of what farm houses should be. l had expected to see squalor and wretchedness, and was i'll prepared for what I really beheld. Exceedingly good gardening was of course prepared for, for Chinese gardning is synonymous with everything that is neat and pro- ductive. But the orchards and mul- berry trees all beautifully trimmed, with the brick built and excellent houses half hidden away in them, certainly astonish- cd me. I chanced to land from my house-boat frequently in order to shoot | woodcock, for it was winter time when I passed through the district. To get these birds it was necessary to scramble over the fields and through the mulberry orchards of the district, and was simply amazed to see how beautifully tho groves of trees were kept. Underneath great quantities of vegetables were grown, not foot of earth appeared to be wasted, and every inch was in the most superb order. Had the whole country been avast garden, it could not have been better tended and cared for. There were not hereabouts any hedges or walls, the fields were divided from each other by deep dykes, which served the double purpose of marking out the land and irrigating or draining, as the case might be, the ad jacent soil. The trees, of which there were myriads, were all planted with mathematical exactness and in the greatest order, unlike the trees in many English orchards, which seem to have been stuck into the ground with view of wasting as much space as possible. And as for the tops of the trees, they had all been carefully trimmed to the same pattern, every litte bough having been inspected and cut as circumstances chanced to require. Inever saw any thing half so orderly in any country in the world, for these were no ornamental i gardens which was going through, but mulberry orchards, extending over hundreds of square miles of country and owned by thousands of different husbandmen. Inside the house, again, I was surprised at the comfort which prevailed. In each one there were at least two rooms set apart specially for the silk-worms, and these were kept scrupulously clean. The l oI4OA AOOA1o OA 1AAC AOuSC WC1C WCll 1uI- nished, comfortable, and warm-in every case very clean also; and did not see in any country house any of the squalor or misery one sees in many English, Scotch, and especially Irish districts.
 At the time when I was in this coun- try too, there was a very general feeling of increased contentment springing up owing to the opening of some large silk winding factories at Shanghai by Ameri- can and English firms. Hitherto the winding of the silk from the cocoons had been done in most cases by the silk growers themselves, and the demand for the silk thus indifferently wound and the prices paid for it were alike small. But with the establishment of silk-wind- ing factories filled with steam machinery at Shanghai it was hoped and ex- pected by the silk-growers that the price of cocoons would go up, and that consequently silk growing would improve as an industry. In any case the entire population seemed to be prosperous and we'll contented. It does not always do to take the dress of any Chinaman as an index to the wealth he may possess. He may have many req sons - among them being a dread of attracting the attention of some rapacious mandarin for not showing more richness of attire than is absolutely necessary, and he may prefer to go about in warm rags than run the risk of being 'tsqueezed" by the To- cal officials, so that many traveller may mistake their intentional poverty of at, tire for want of money. had pointed out to me in Canton one day, for ex- ample, particularly woe-begonc look ing Chinaman going up the street. The gentleman who was with me, and who was resident on the ad jacent isl and of Shamien, said, "Poor ? I wish l was as rich as that Chinaman, Why, half the European houses here are in his debt, but if he showed this by his dress the mandarin here would soon borrow q trihe of him."